Beef Tips and Gravy Over Rice

I try to always plan my menu’s but on tight budget weeks sometimes it’s just whatever I can come up with! This past week was one of those! I had some chopped stew meat in my freezer. Typically I make beef stew with this but I didn’t have any potatoes. A quick search on the internet landed me at a crock pot beef tip recipe. Well, I didn’t have time to use my crock pot at this point and was missing some ingredients but it gave me enough motivation to come up with something! The recipe turned out so good! Eli cleaned his plate and that rarely happens! It’s easy and very frugal since stew meat is one of the cheapest meats you can buy!

Heat oil in stock pot. Add beef stew meat with the sliced onions and brown (I peppered them lightly, be careful with the salt though, especially if you are using beef broth or full sodium soy sauce. I didn’t salt mine at all until the end!). Once the tips are browned add 3 cups of water, plus 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, scraping any bits off the bottom of the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil then cover and reduce heat to low. Cook on low for 1.5-2 hours or until tender. I added one more cup of water with soy sauce at about the 1.5 hour mark, so just watch your liquid. It wasn’t absolutely necessary but it made more gravy, which we like! 🙂 Mine took right around 2 hours. Once the beef tips are tender, add in your parsley and garlic powder and turn the heat up to a low boil. Make a slurry with the 1/3 cup of flour, plus 3/4 cup of water. What this means is to mix your flour and water together with a fork until the flour is incorporated. Once your beef mixture is at a low boil, add in your slurry stirring constantly. Continue stirring until you get the thickness you desire and to cook out the flour taste (about 5 minutes). You may have to add more slurry if you want a thicker gravy. Taste to season, add salt and pepper as needed. Serve over cooked rice.

The Hubs doesn’t like rice so I made these whole wheat drop biscuits for him to have with his! They were really yummy, too! I’m sure the first part of this recipe could be made in the crock pot and then thickened right before dinner. I haven’t tried it yet but will soon!

*Soy sauce sounds weird but I read a tip somewhere that if you don’t have beef broth (and I rarely do!) you can use 1 cup of water and 1 TBS of soy sauce. It doesn’t taste like soy sauce, but gives it that deep flavor. You can certainly use beef broth if you’d like. I use MSG free, low sodium soy sauce!